After years of looking down my nose at PPC and seeing it as cheap, easy and little more than a bidding war that burns cash faster than the KLF on a beach I’ve came to the conclusion I was right. Maybe not the derision I feel for PPC but certainly the rest.

The change has been using PPC to amke learning about how to improve the effectiveness of other Internet Marketing channels.

Step One – Abuse PPC to Gain Knowledge

Test every keyword you want to optimise for and every page you think it may be appropriate for. Then use this data to measure, test, refine! You’re investing in the future not just in sales. If you find a keyword has great volume but no sales think about why this is. Could well be the page your sending traffic to isnt great – could just be the keyword is useless or you have broad search on for a keyterm like ‘insurance’. Even if you get no conversions you’ve learned something.

Step Two – Reabuse PPC for Conversion Tweaking

So you know where and what to point – so you know where you should be monitoring your SEO campaign. Next get onto conversion and start testing your page layout! Get booking forms, calls to actions, font sizes, web layouts etc all tested and keep results for every test.

Step Three – Get Your SEO Flying

Get your SEO flying. Get your good links, fantastic content and a strong following of incremental visitors and sit back and enjoy the money that you’ve earned by using your PPC budget tactically.

Step Four – Retest, Reabuse and Realign your PPC campaign

Get your PPC budget reinvested in new terms and turn off old campaigns as pages get SEO rankings. Every penny you spend from now on in PPC is only one tactic within your internet marketing arsenal of techniques You are no longer relying on your PPC to drive sales and giving Google, Yahoo and MSN your money.

Get started, get testing, get PPC down to being a tactic and not a strategy and if anyone tells you PPC is an investment remember they could be right – but only where PPC is used as part of a wider strategy and the tactic for your PPC is for you to learn how to make more money. Its your money spend it wisely and make every non-earning penny earn you more in some other way.

Have just been hacking away at back link stuff in Google for the basis of monthly reports and I keep getting multiple result sets for each back link query! AAARRRRGGGHHHH

Below I’ve posted a list of Data Centres that I use for checking across the web. I got his list from another website a while back and I can’t remember where. If you know tell me so I can reference it effectively 🙂 Read the rest of this entry »

Keyword Selection and Its importance for SEO

SEO is a long term process, normally, so to see results you need to invest a lot more effort and labour than you do for PPC. For this central reason effective keyword research ensures that your efforts are not misplaced. Over and over I hear of companies who invested time in researching term A , which is :

Unachieveable

Is of little business value

Delivers traffic but traffic that doesn’t convert

Has cost so much that it makes the CPA not cost effective

Why you need Keyword Research if you employ a Search Engine Optimisation company

Your SEO comapny in affect holds your business development in their hands. You need to know the investment you are making is likely to make you a return on your investment

You can ensure your SEO provider is not a cowboy – no qualification is needed to be a SEO ‘expert‘ anyone can do it

You need to ensure that your business objectives are inline with the program and if you can aid your SEO comapny in this stage they can more fully carry out your business needs

Why you need Keyword Research if you do your own Search Engine Optimisation

Ensure that you are placing effort into the correct market terms

Speed up your own SEO and get better results quicker

Be able to monitor and track the performance of your campaign effectively and make business level decisions on which specific niches are best for your business

Tomorrow – What search terms you think are appropriate to your business?

The first stage of any search engine marketing campaign, for SEO or for PPC, is effective and wide ranging keyword research. Everything you will do with a search engine will stem from this research. This keyword research process can be split into five main categories:

What search terms you think are appropriate to your business

What search terms your competitors are targeting

What the market is actually searching for

What the likely Cost benefit per term is likely to be

Keyword Refinement

Over the next couple of days we will investigate each of these in more details. Todays SEM training will constitute on why you need to put so much effort into the early stage of your Pay Per Click marketing campaign.

PPC Keyword Research

Reason 1 – Why keyword research is important if you use an SEM agency to manage your campaign?

If an agency is managing your current PPC campaign it is likely that you have agreed a target Cost Per Acquisition for your campaign. So that over the next month you achieve a level of sales at an average price. At key way points in your campaign you will analyze the performance of your campaign to ensure that your agency is meeting target – remember you will be paying anything between 5% and 20% for this service. The higher the level of commission that your agency is charging the higher the level of personal involvement your agency will have with your account, in general. Those charging the lowest levels of commission will have a higher level of automation within their processes that those charging higher commissions. You need to ensure whatever level of involvement your agency has that they are in control and are effectively managing your campaign. An effective campaign will have specific keyword groups and each group will be monitored individually. By understanding how to conduct effective keyword research you can ensure that your campaign is:

Developing rather than stagnating – good agencies will keep finding you more and more terms and continue to increase your keyword pool rather than concentrating solely on brand terms to drive traffic

Keep your agency on their toes – if an agency knows they are dealing with a client who knows their stuff they are far more likely to help you increase your understanding of their profession. By showing an interest and a knowledge in the processes your agency is using you will gain respect, better results and an improved working relationship with your agency.

You will be able to measure the progress your agency is making in your campaign – i.e. are you paying too high a commission for an agency who continues to use the same set of keywords all the time when you can spot competitors leveraging market share
by expanding their bid words all the time.

Reason 2 – Why keyword research is important if you manage your own PPC campaign

You need to keep refining and improving your campaign – it is your business no one else’s and to maximize the returns you need to make your campaign as exact, targeted and reflective of your products and to the needs of your consumer

See gaps before your competitions

Ensure your campaign is ready to make you money so as soon as new products are in stock they are online and easily found

Reason 3 – Why do I need to do keyword research if I am happy with my current PPC campaign?

You can always do better – You can always make more money – You can always minimize the market share of competitors and extend your business and make is more stable in the long term

Tomorrow – why you need high quality keyword research for an effective Search Engine Optimization Campaign